I visited IKEA's first Sussex store on opening day – here's five things I noticed that you might not know

The Swedish furniture giant’s first store in Sussex opened at 10am, in the flagship unit formerly occupied by Debenhams.

The first customer arrived at 5.45am, and hundreds of others joined the queue in the morning to be some of the first inside the new store.

When I realised I was going to be in Brighton for IKEA’s opening day, for an unrelated appointment, I was nervous about paying the store a visit.

I feared it might be too busy, but in the interests of journalism I went along and here’s the top five things I found:

1. Once you get in, it’s not that easy to get out. Crazy as it is to admit, given the almost cult-like following the chain has, this was my first-ever time inside an IKEA. I understand they’re all laid out so you follow a kind-of one-way system around the shop, but it does make it a bit difficult if you just want to pop in for one thing.
2. It’s better to go later in the day. My family and I arrived at 5pm and we walked into the store without any of the early morning queues. Yes, it was busy in there, but I imagine nowhere near as busy as it had been during the first few hours of the day.
3. You can eat really cheaply in the IKEA. There’s a small Swedish deli downstairs, and a 100-seater restaurant upstairs where you can get eight of IKEA’s famous meatballs with mashed potatoes, peas, cream sauce, and lingonberry jam for just £5.50. A hotdog in the downstairs deli costs just 85p.
4. There’s a re-shop and re-use section. Customers can sell old IKEA products back to the store through a buyback service. These are then sold second-hand to other customers at a discounted price.
5. There’s a product for every eventuality. Need storage solutions, pillows, furniture, a new bathroom, cookwear, toys, food, plants… IKEA has almost anything you could possibly need to furnish your home with, plus lots more. I can see why friends used to drive miles to the nearest IKEA for the experience of having everything they could possibly need at their fingertips!

It was definitely fun to be there on the opening day of such a hotly anticipated brand opening for the first time in Sussex. If the opening day crowd are anything to go by, it’s going to become a favourite with Sussex customers very quickly.

Mark Buchanan-Smith, Meeting Place manager at Churchill Square, said: “To my fellow Brightonians, you've been wanting an IKEA store for many, many years. It's now here. So come down on Thursday, come and see this amazing store and really enjoy the experience.”

Market manager Karina Gilpin said the sore has been designed ‘with the city at its heart’.

She told Sussex World: “When you look at the city, it's so unique and creative and vibrant, so we're super happy to be a part of the community and the neighbourhood.

"Prior to that, customers were having to go to Croydon and Southampton, so bringing IKEA to the centre of the city as a part of Churchill Square is absolutely amazing and we're super happy to be here.

“Talk about creativity, talk about authenticity – just being your authentic self and the vibrancy of the city.

“It's so lively and that's first and foremost for us being here, but also just the accessibility of being right in the centre of the city. Brightonians love to interact with the IKEA brand and just bringing it closer so they don't have to travel so far out in order to interact with the brand has been quite pivotal in opening in Brighton.”

The company bought the mall in 2023 for an estimated £145 million.